We are very pleased to welcome to Lukas Herde to the ERC BodyCapital research project team.
After an undergraduate degree in Cultural studies at Europa Universität Viadrina, Frankfurt/Oder and a Masters in Global history at Freie Universität Berlin/Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin with short term study periods at Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV) and University College London, University of London, Lukas now joins the ERC BodyCapital project for his PhD research.
‘Lifelong sex’ and ‘healthy ageing’ – The emergence of sex in old age as wellbeing paradigm in France and Britain from the 1960s to the late 2000s
Undoubtedly, affirmative visibilities of those beyond the age of 60 as erotic beings, and their bodies as capable of sexual pleasure, remain confined to the margins of today’s Western mainstream culture. And yet, discourses and representations of ageing sexuality have undergone significant transformations in recent decades. These are brought forth by an interplay of various sociocultural phenomena: from shifting demographics to the increasing medicalization of old age and sexuality. They are borne by multifarious actors and their diverse rationales: from elderly and sexual rights advocates to health care and pharmaceutical industries. And they are negotiated on various platforms: from self-help books to television shows and online forums. Overall, long-standing cultural notions of the ‘asexual elderly’ seem to increasingly collide with new understandings of the old as sexually desiring subject and sex as ‘healthy’ practice in old age.
The project proposed here seeks to shed light on the historical dimensions of competing stories and visualizations of old age, sex and wellbeing from the 1960s to the late 2000s in Britain and France. It wants to explore the emergent visibilities of the old person as intimate subject, as sexual health campaign target and as consumer on a diversifying ‘market of desires’. The study seeks to locate these developments within the transfiguring sexual cultures and cultures of ‘healthy ageing’ of those decades. Moreover, in line with the ERC BodyCapital, the project aims to especially scrutinize the role that visuals and mass media played in shaping and/or disrupting (self-)perceptions of bodies, health and intimacy in the later years. In this vein, it suggests that television and the world wide web were crucial in the reconceptualization of the old body as sexual; the dissemination of claims to free sexual expression in late life; the circulation of (hetero-)sexual subjectivities of the elderly; and the spread of marketing narratives of the independent, ‘sexually healthy’ old person.
PhD research project by Lukas Herde, September 2019
Image credits: Still from ‘Baisse un peu l’abat jour’ (Moi Je), Antenne 2, 1985. INA Archives: www.ina.fr/video/CPB86003478/baisse-un-peu-l-abat-jour-video.html
